More than 20 years after John Ball's novel was adapted into a feature film with Rod Steiger & Sidney Poitier, In The Heat of The Night became a TV series, marking the return of Carroll O'Connor (ex-All In The Family) to primetime.
Heat was a midseason replacement series when it bowed on NBC in 1988, and was the latest entry from former network executive turned producer Fred Silverman, who'd previously revived Perry Mason as a series of TV-movies, and had brought Andy Griffith back to television in Matlock, both also for NBC, although the latter would finish its run on ABC.
O'Connor inherited the role of police chief William Gillespie, played by Steiger in the movie version, but things are different in Sparta, Mississippi this time around. In the course of 8 seasons---the final season consisted of 4 TV-movies---the Sparta Police Department would begin hiring African-American officers, the end result of prodigal son Virgil Tibbs (Howard E. Rollins, Jr., ex-Wildside) returning to Sparta, with wife Althea (Anne-Marie Johnson). In the course of the series, O'Connor had developed creative control, gaining a title of executive producer, despite clashes with veteran producer Juanita Bartlett (ex-The Rockford Files), which led to Bartlett's ouster. O'Connor's adopted son, Hugh, joined the cast, but passed away before the last of the TV-movies aired in 1995.
In season 3, Denise Nicholas (ex-Room 222) joined the show as councilwoman Harriet DeLong. As with Tibbs, Chief Gillespie had an adversarial relationship with Harriet at first, but in time, the two fell in love, and were married around the start of season 7, by which time the series had moved to CBS. Gillespie was dismissed as chief, leading to Carl Weathers joining the show as the new chief, while Gillespie became a county sheriff.
Anne-Marie Johnson left the series to join the ensemble of the Fox series, In Living Color, and it was explained that Virgil & Althea Tibbs were separated. Rollins left after season 6 due to legal issues, but would return later on, with Tibbs having left the force to ultimately become a lawyer. Currently, This TV, which has a number of MGM, Orion, & United Artists movies in its library, airs a 4 hour Sunday night block of Heat (check listings), marking its return to cable after a run on TNT a number of years back.
Here's the intro:
Rating: B+.
Has it been that long since Hugh died? Scary how time flies. It seemed like yesterday his dad was in front of the cameras cursing at the drug dealer who gave him his fatal dose.
ReplyDeleteThat was the main reason he was cast on the show - so O'Connor could keep an eye on him and help him stay clean.
I liked the show for the first several seasons (and Carroll O'Connor being among the few legendary TV actors who could cleanly leave one iconic role and successfully personify another) but eventually I was tuning out. I think it was the relationship between the Sheriff and Delong coupled with the "divorce" of Althea and Tibbs. The show ran a bit longer than it should have.
You forgot to mention another important cast member - Alan Autry, as Sgt. Bubba Skinner.
Yeah, I did, but I only had so much time to compose this piece. Autry later resurfaced on Grace Under Fire, IIRC, and hasn't been seen since.
ReplyDelete